In honour of today's 145th anniversary of the proclamation of the
German Empire, and to go with my new Taschen book, I've created a new page of my website on Germany in 1900. It is too often forgotten that
Imperial Germany was not just the Kaisers but included some twenty other
reigning monarchs--kings, grand dukes, dukes, and princes--who I rather
enjoyed looking up to get their pictures and dates. My favourite of
these rulers is probably Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, the brilliantly
artistic "Theatre Duke." Between Wikipedia and Die souveränen Fürstenhäuser Europas
I was able to find age-appropriate pictures of almost everyone, except for Alexander Prince of Lippe (who was mentally ill, reigning with a regency), and the morganatic second wife of Heinrich XXIV Prince Reuss.
It has long struck me as one of the
greatest injustices of modern history that, whatever one thinks of the
causes of World War I, surely the interior German monarchies cannot be
blamed at all, yet they were all dragged down in the apocalypse of
November 1918. May they never be forgotten, and somehow one day restored
to their charming and occasionally eccentric glory.
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7 comments:
I like it! Any particular reason, though, that you chose the year 1900?
Yes: besides the fact that it's a nice round number marking the beginning of the 20th century, I recently acquired both a large book of colorized photographs of Germany around 1900 (see the "Bored Panda" link) and a wall map of the world as it was in 1900, so this goes well with them.
Ah, okay, I see. Thanks for explaining!
God bless!
Wonderful new page, sir!
The 20th century, BTW, begins with 1901.
Technically yes; psychologically and culturally, not really. What's significant in the turn of a century is how we write the date, and that changed in 1900, even more so in 2000.
And thanks; I'm glad you liked the page!
Appearance over substance.
But there are worse illusions that people fall for, like democracy, modern democracy in particular...
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